1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a road system for an automatically traveling vehicle (hereinafter "one vehicle"), on which the automatically traveling vehicle automatically travels on the basis of information provided by a road-vehicle communication between the vehicle and information transmitting means provided on or near the road and information provided by vehicle-vehicle communication between the one vehicle and another vehicle.
2. Description of the Prior Art
An automatically traveling vehicle designed to travel automatically based upon data provided by road-vehicle communication and vehicle-vehicle communication has already been proposed by the present assignee (see Japanese Patent Application No. 7-283973).
When an automatically traveling vehicle merges into or diverges from a main lane from or into a branch lane of a road at a merging point or diverging point between both the lanes, it is necessary to perceive or recognize data such as the distance from the one vehicle to the merging point or the diverging point (which will be referred to as a "connection point" hereinafter) and the position and shape of the connection point. However, a means for providing such data is not provided on a road for an automatically traveling vehicle which has been conventionally proposed.